January 2 – Pirate Henry Morgan of Wales holds a meeting of his captains on board his ship, the former Royal Navy frigate Oxford, and an explosion in the ship's gunpowder supply kills 200 of his crew and four of the pirate captains who had attended the summit. [1]
April 9 – Aurangzeb, the Muslim Emperor of the Mughal Empire in India, issues a firman decree for the protection of all Hindu temples and schools in his kingdom.
May 19 – The first people executed in Sweden's Mora witch trial are put to death, with seven women and one man beheaded after being convicted of "abduction of children to Satan."
July 13 – Trinh Tac, the warlord who administers the Kingdom of Vietnam, issues an order banning all foreign vessels from entering the harbor at Hanoi, requiring to anchor no closer than the river port at Pho Hien, 35 miles (56 km) down the Red River from Hanoi.
July 16 – A rockfall from the Mönchsberg mountain above Salzburg in Austria kills 230 people as tons of the mountainside fall onto a neighborhood on a street, the Gstättengasse.
July 24 – During an attempt by a fleet of French Navy ships to stop the siege of Candia by bombardment of Ottoman positions on the island of Crete, the arsenal of gunpowder on the French flagship, the 56-gun warship Thérèse, catches fire and explodes. Out of 350 crew on the Thérèse, only seven survive. Demoralized, the remaining French commanders halt the bombardment and the fleet withdraws.
July 25 – Pieter Bickel, a Lutheran pastor and a mountaineer in Austria, becomes the first person to climb to the peak of the tallest of the Southeastern Walsertal Mountains, the 8,310 foot (2,530 m) Großer Widderstein.
July – The Hanseatic League, after 400 years of operation, holds its last official meeting, taking place at the city of Lübeck. At its height, the economic alliance of German cities had 180 members; only nine (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Danzig, Braunschweig, Cologne, Hildesheim, Osnabrück and Rostock) are represented for the final gathering.[7] The final series of meetings had started on May 29.[8]
August 17 – A group of English settlers, led by Joseph West, departs from The Downs on the ship Carolina with instructions to make the first European settlement in the modern-day U.S. state of South Carolina. After a long voyage with stops in Ireland and Barbados, the Carolina settlers arrive at Port Royal on March 17 next.
August 24 – "The Man in the Iron Mask", a prisoner identified as "Eustache Dauger", arrives at the French fortress of Pignerol, with Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars in charge of his incarceration. The identity of the prisoner is kept secret with a mask – actually of velvet – over his face, so legends as to his true identity grow.[9]
August 25 – The day after the verdicts at the Mora witch trial in Sweden, 14 women and one man are publicly beheaded after having confessed to various crimes involving the use of "enchanted tools" on behalf of the Devil. Another 47 are convicted and taken away for a later execution.
October 9 – The English ship Nonsuch returns to London with the first products acquired from trade around Canada's Hudson Bay, a cargo of fine furs. The bounty from the Nonsuch expedition attracts investors for the soon-to-be-chartered Hudson's Bay Company.
November 28 – In India, the Mughal EmperorAurangzeb learns of a rebellion of Hindu residents of in various parts of the Mathurá where he had given the order for the destruction of non-Muslim temples, with rioting in Mauza' Rewarah, Chandarkah, and Surkhrú. The Emperor's historian, Saqi Mustaid Khan, records Aurangzeb's dispatch of General Hasan 'Ali Khán to attack the rebels, and 300 of them are "sent to perdition" while the Mughals lose "many imperial soldiers". Another 250 surviving rebels are arrested. Kokilá Ját, leader of the rebels, is among the prisoners put to death a month later. [11]
December 8 – The Sultanate of Bima, located on the now-Indonesian island of Sumbawa and ruled by Abu'l-Khair Sirajuddin, surrenders its authority to the Dutch East Indies Company, the VOC.
December 18 – The Battle of Cádiz begins off of the coast of the Spanish city as the English warship HMS Mary Rose encounters seven pirate ships from Algeria. Although none of the ships on either side are sunk, the Algerians are forced to retreat with an unknown number of casualties, and the Mary Rose loses 12 dead and 18 wounded.
December 21 – A papal conclave that will last for four months begins in Rome to select a successor to Pope Clement IX, who had died 12 days earlier. At the opening, 54 of the 70 members of the College of Cardinals are present. At least 21 Cardinals are considered for the papacy before Emilio Altieri is selected on April 29 to become Pope Clement X.
^Dieter Zimmerling, The Hanseatic League: Trading Power under the Sign of the Cog (Heyne, 1978)
^Werner Scheltjens, North Eurasian Trade in World History, 1660–1860: The Economic and Political Importance of the Baltic Sea (Taylor & Francis, 2021)
^ French novelist and historian Marcel Pagnol theorizes in a 1965 book, Le Secret du Masque de fer, that the prisoner is the older, illegitimate brother of France's King Louis XIV, punished for conspiracy against the crown.
^ Jadunath Sarkar, ed., Maasir-i-Alamgiri: A History Of Emperor Aurangzeb by Saqi Mustaid Khan (Longmans, Green and Company, 1947) p. 60
^Weeks, Mary Elvira (1932). "The discovery of the elements. II. Elements known to the alchemists". Journal of Chemical Education. 9 (1): 11. Bibcode:1932JChEd...9...11W. doi:10.1021/ed009p11.
^Schiavone, Michael J. (2009). Dictionary of Maltese Biographies Vol. 1 A–F. Pietà: Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza. p. 755. ISBN9789993291329.
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